I. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to virology and medicine. In certain aspects the invention relates to oncolytic viruses, particularly non-VSV oncolytic rhabdoviruses and oncolytic rhabdoviruses comprising a non-VSV glycoprotein.
II. Background
A number of viruses have been shown to replicate in and kill a wide variety of tumor cells in vitro (Sindbis virus (Unno et al., 2005); Sendai virus (Kinoh et al., 2004); Coxackie virus (Shafren et al., 2004); Herpes simplex virus (Mineta et al., 1995); Parvovirus (Abschuetz et a., 2006); Adenovirus (Heise et al., 2000); Polio virus (Gromeier et al., 2000); Newcastle disease virus (Sinkovics and Horvath, 2000); Vesicular stomatitis virus (Stojdl et al., 2000); Meales virus (Grote et al., 2001); Reovirus (Coffey et al., 1998); Retrovirus (Logg et al., 2001); Vaccinia (Timiryasova et al., 1999); and Influenza (Bergmann et al., 2001)). In addition, such viruses have demonstrated efficacy in treating animal models of cancer.
Vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV), a well known and well studied rhabdovirus, has been shown to kill tumor cell lines in cell culture experiments, and has demonstrated efficacy in a variety of rodent cancer models (Stojdl et al., 2000; Stojdl et al., 2003). However, VSV does not kill all cancer cells.